The End of Time
by Dariha
Summary: Stranded in the future, Ultimecia is alone but for her broken memories and the means to visit them. Will she ever remember her lost knight? Is she doomed to a loneliness beyond imagining? One day, she discovers that she shares a connection with Edea, another one of history's sorceresses, but the connection begins to get the better of her...
1. Prologue

In the darkness and vastness of space, the sorceress Adel had been buried alive; frozen in a cryostatic slumber. She was unable to move, unable to conjure, unable to die. All she could do was dream. She dreamed of revenge on the world that should have been hers, and her dreams were terrible.

A giant among men, Adel had grown out of the destruction and chaos that was the Centran armageddon – the Lunar Cry. She had been there as a young girl when the tears fell: a torrent of beasts and nightmares that were born and that dwelt on the moon, crashing down upon a civilisation that was at the pinnacle of its golden age. She had hidden and watched the slaughter as the buildings came down and the flames arose, she had watched as the armies were overcome and the people of Centra made their last stand.

Their astronomers and academics had seen it coming, but not soon enough. There had only been enough time to build three shelters, and even they would not have survived the onslaught but for the virtue of the mobility that had been built into their design. Those lucky enough to be selected made their escape, but none of the sorceresses were among them. They had vowed to stay and fight to their last breath. It was a sacrifice that had bought the shelters enough time to flee the continent and found the countries of Galbadia, Esthar, and Trabia.

How many sorceress had fought and lost? How many had come to her in their death thralls desperately seeking to bestow upon her their power as a glorious gift?

Only Adel knew; and only Adel knew what she was going to do with it:

She brought the towering technological might of Esthar under her control first. Her rule was as ruthless as it was bloody and inescapable. But it could only last as long as she did, she knew, unless she found a successor. Someone with ability, someone with potential, someone female – that she might inherit her powers, as she had done when she was a girl.

She ordered mass kidnappings, and left their examination to Dr Odine. If he found someone unusual, he brought her to Adel's attention. If they were banal and ordinary, they were disposed of. When Dr Odine brought her a young girl called Ellone, Adel knew she was special. Unfortunately for Adel, she was not the first person to realise this either:

Laguna Loire had met Ellone after escaping the reconnaissance mission to Centra. The Galbadian army had sent him and his team, Ward Zabac and Kiros Seagill, following intelligence that Esthar was excavating something.

Adel had not forgotten the crystal shard that had fallen from the moon during the lunar cry – it was colossal in size, and the monsters had swarmed around it like bees around a hive – so naturally she had sent the army to retrieve it, planning to use it as a weapon against those that resisted her rule in Trabia.

Laguna, of course, had little or no understanding of what he and his team had stumbled upon, only that they were in seriously hot water. During their escape, he and Ward injured themselves falling from a cliff as they tried to reach the sea – Ward badly damaging his throat.

Laguna, however, was knocked unconscious. So his friends decided to take him to the nearest town to recover: Winhill. The only person there who was willing to take in the strange Galbadian soldier, was Raine, Ellone's mother.

Laguna grew to love Raine, over time. It began with working to pay for his keep, then with working to repay her kindness in looking after him while he got better, then working to help provide for her because he enjoyed making her happy, and then there it was: devotion. Duty. Loyalty. Love.

Laguna loved Elle from the moment he first met her. She was sweet, she was innocent, and she knew what fun there was to be had in the smallest of things. She was enthusiastic, she was kind and she was brave. She was, in essence, all the qualities Laguna admired in a person; being around her made him feel like a better man – she made him feel special, and vice versa. Then there it was: dependency. Reliance. Camaraderie. Love.

When he received the news that Elle had been kidnapped, Laguna didn't hesitate. He didn't think (which was typical); but then, he didn't need to. There was nothing to think about.

Leaving Raine and Winhill behind, he crossed the border into Esthar; he joined the resistance faction that were planning to overthrow Adel's rule; became pivotal in their plan to capture and ensnare her; helped seal her in her tomb; sent her into orbit around the moon; became president of Esthar.

Became a father.

Became a widower.

As time moved inexorably forward for Laguna, it stopped for Adel. She remained drifting, the "succession of witches" momentarily forestalled.

And her thoughts drifted with her. And they were this:

 _I am alive._

 _Bring me back._

 _I will_ never _let you forget me._


	2. Installation Disc

Time was her enemy, she realised, and it had been all along. The two of them, one – a sorceress, the other – eternity, had been locked in battle since before she could remember; and her memory was no longer what it once was.

Neither was her body.

The centuries had changed Rinoa's appearance so that now, when she caught sight of her own reflection, she was reminded of those long and hard battles she had fought against her predecessors. The only blessing was that she often forgot how she had now become akin to those she had once loathed and feared herself. Sorceress Adel, in particular.

Some changes had occurred naturally, but there were others she had made to herself purposefully. As her hair had grown in length, she had taken to wearing it up, and outwards, like the horns of the behemoths that roamed her castle. She also liked to wear tightly rolled ribbons from her hair these days – sometimes blue, sometimes mauve – and they were rolled so tightly that they looked like the shells that sorceress Edea had worn as her jewellery, the conches from Renauld beach that Cid had sent her as souvenirs. Her hair itself had long since turned ashen grey, yet still she rued the loss of her shoulder-length jet black.

Her wings had darkened to the obsidian black that her hair had once been, in a curious reversal. They were soft and luxurious, and while to fly with them was exhausting and the preening quite tiresome for her, they were wonderfully warm when she wrapped them around herself at night like a blanket.

Her hands had grown in length _and_ strength, with talon-like nails that made her look like she had claws instead. She tried to hide them from herself with gloves, but to no avail. Her monstrous feet, on the other hand, she left bare; taking an odd sort of pride in them. Not a monster's feet, but a lion's. They reminded her of a lion's feet, and somehow that was comforting. Lions had great strength and pride. Wasn't that what he had said?

Another half-memory, its sweetness and rarity bringing a smile to her lips, only to become her immediate fury as soon as she realised it for exactly what it was. A memory.

Nostalgia had become wearisome for her.

Where was her knight now? She knew that his fate had been sealed, long ago; that they were meant to be together, forever – but that even heroes cannot defeat time. She knew he was gone, lost to her forever. But who he was, she just could not remember. His face, his voice, his actions, his whole character, all of them lost to oblivion.

This sorceress' fate was a cruel one: doomed to outlive friends, family, loved ones; and she, she who had made the best of friends, she who had found love, had been forced to watch them grow old and die, one after the other. Perhaps that is why sorceresses cannot rest in peace until they have passed on their curse to another. Either that, or it was down to Hyne's sheer will to survive.

Sorceresses had an abnormal life span, being the descendants of Hyne; and when a sorceress was defeated, she passed on Hyne's powers to another. Rinoa had inherited the powers of two different sorceresses, Edea and Adel, so her powers were greater than any sorceress that had come before her. Rinoa, yes. That had been her name. Once.

The few people that were left in the world (the ones that hadn't opposed her will, hadn't tried to dethrone her out of fear of her divine power) had taken to calling her by another name, now: Ultimecia. She didn't know if it was a bastardisation of "ultimacy" or "ultimate-seer", but both were apt, and she had been called a lot worse. It had an uncanny familiarity to it, but despite her initial disapproval, she let it slide. What difference did it make what they called her?

In this way she woke up each day knowing herself to be Rinoa the lost and lonely, but went to sleep knowing herself as Ultimecia the feared and the reviled.

This future was the present that she now lived in; a ruined world that she was being held accountable for, and an interminable loneliness… was this supposed to be her end?

Her only solace and escape was the antique junctioning machine, engineered before his death by Dr Odine. A device that could send her consciousness back into the past that she had loved and been such a part of. Jamie, they called it, from the acronym JME. Jamie was a small machine (considering what it was capable of), about the size of a small wardrobe, and she kept it in the annex of her throne room. It worked by placing a circlet, which was connected to the machine by means of a modest cable, around her head; then all she had to do was focus on a person she had met and could remember.

She had some control over what point in time she would arrive at – a skill that improved with practice – but she could only revisit that point in the past once. It was like watching a cine-film that burnt the tape as it played it; or the mental equivalent of trying to step into a locker when, it turns out, you are already stood inside.

Nonetheless, Jamie worked. And oh, how it worked.

She spent countless evenings reliving the past through the eyes of the people she had known and loved. She watched her father's rise to glory as general of the Galbadian army during the Sorceress War. She watched her mother's singing career blossom, and stayed with her in the car right until the very end. She watched Selphie's childhood in Trabia, her marriage to Irvine. She watched Quistis' graduation, Zell's children grow up and learn to fight like their father and read like their mother.

But she could never find her knight. She just couldn't remember him. She had only herself and Bahamut, the draconian king of the guardian forces, to thank for that…

It had not been long after she had lost her knight to something as mundane as old age, considering what they had survived together, that the world seemed to turn against her out of fear and loathing. It was hard to tell if they were jealous of her power, or frightened of it. In any case, she was routed out of her home, hunted all over the world, until something in her finally snapped, and she took a stand.

The battle had been long, and against the combined might of Galbadia and Esthar. She had won, and millions had died, the survivors disappeared into the cracks like cockroaches. But she didn't win without help, and not without paying a price, either.

When she summoned Bahamut, his fury was palpable. She found herself recalling his words when they had first discovered and freed him from the deep-sea research centre's laboratory: "Using my powers, it is you humans I fear". He rolled in on wings the colour of blood, and decimated the allied forces. They were enveloped in flame and a light so bright she had to turn away.

Afterwards, she watched the fires dying down beneath the sunset. She watched the smoke dissipating before the glow of the moon, and the carrion birds feed on the bodies that hadn't been mixed with the sands of the Kashkabald desert to become glass…

It wasn't until the sun rose again from behind her, casting her single shadow, that she realised she had forgotten someone she never thought she could forget. All that remained of her knight now were a ring, and her grief.

She had never forgiven Bahamut, and her resentment and regret had twisted him, in the same way it had twisted her stomach. They were connected, after all. She watched her mighty king of dragons fall from majesty, only to rise again as she envisioned him: the unholy Tiamat.

One night, she went so far as to get dressed in some of her old clothes. She took the ring from around her neck and slid it over her finger. Before she used Jamie she cleared her mind of everything – she held nobody specific in mind. Only the clothes, the ring, the idea of her knight and a place they should meet. Jamie took her through mountains, across deserts and plains. Timber, Balamb, Galbadia. They sped before her at such a speed that they began blur together until they became almost indistinguishable. She and Jamie searched for hours, until she was so exhausted it was all she could do to scream, "Where are you!?"

When she came back to her own time and removed Jamie from her head, she found that she had been crying. She did not visit the past for a while after that.

Much later, she discovered that she could not only be an observer of the past, but when sending herself into one of her predecessors, she could become a participant.

This was because something more than just their consciousness connected the sorceresses across time, something wholly inhuman. It was the diffused "magic of Hyne" that concealed itself inside the women. It was Hyne that gave the sorceresses their power, and it was through that connection that Rinoa found she could do more than just observe the past when looking through Edea's eyes.


	3. Disc One

It had been over a game of cards with Ellone one day. They were aboard the White SeeD's ship, and Elle had had a run of good hands. They were playing basic rules, but "open" clearly wasn't one of them, and Edea, who would not use her sorcery to cheat, was losing badly. Rinoa, however, who was a sore loser at the best of times, knew she had the power to see Elle's cards.

Edea and Rinoa both had that power. _Why weren't they using it?_ She demanded to know.

 _I don't know…_ came the meek reply.

"I don't know," muttered Edea, loud enough for Elle to hear.

"Don't know what, Mrs. Kramer?"

Edea looked confused, then vacant.

"We can stop playing if you like?"

A smile broke through Edea's lips as she took in the cabin around her as if seeing it for the first time.

"No, no dear. Let's continue. I feel as though my luck may be changing…"

Elle was not bothered so much about ending up losing the entire game of Triple Triad, but more by the fact that Edea had called her "dear" in that way.

So it was that Rinoa could possess Edea, and move her to her will. She could connect to that other part of herself – the part she shared with Edea, the part that was timeless and immortal, the uncorrupted half of Hyne – and had influence over it.

It was certainly progress, and whereas before she had merely been watching the past she remembered so fondly, she could now re- _live_ her past (albeit vicariously), and that was even more addictive. So addictive, in fact, that she resolved to stay in Edea for as long as it took to find her knight again. Now that she was this close, she couldn't miss this opportunity.

Something more, though; this invisible bond between the two, this thread of Hyne's magic that ran through them, had grown. It almost had a voice of its own that demanded to be heard. An incessant humming, a buzz that invigorated and empowered Rinoa, but also irritated her in its constancy.

Later that day came Edea's strange decision to leave the ship for Galbadia. Unquestioningly loyal, they dropped her off on the north shore of the Galbadian province, west of the Gotland peninsula. When they put a small contingent of White SeeD together as an escort for her, Edea had laughed at them. _Protekting? Ha!_

"I don't need protecting," she scorned, "Don't insult me."

The world needed organising, she had realised, if she were to have any real hope of finding her knight. If she didn't find him in the process, then the world would find him for her, once it was under her command. The best place to start in this time period, she knew, would be Galbadia. Her father wouldn't help her, but that Vinzer Deling had always been a pushover – a few bribes here and there and he would be wrapped around her finger.

 _Just like the old days._ And it was, but something about it didn't sit right. She was enjoying herself, her freedom, her new _raison d'etre_ , but much like the White SeeD ship she had been glad to be rid of, she was no longer sure who the captain of the ship of her soul was. There was Edea trapped in there, but she had about as much fight in her as a red bat. Then there was Rinoa herself, the captain at the wheel, steering things. But then there was also Hyne – who was there with them both.

He had become a more noticeable presence of late, something akin to a splinter in the mind, yet when she looked for him, he couldn't be found – it wasn't be until later, when it was too late, she would realise that, to continue the analogy of the ship, Hyne was more than a captain; he was in fact the tide that carried them, he was the wind that filled their sails. He had made the stars they would sail by, and he pulled the strings on the bodies he had given them.

It was not long before she had the president hanging on the edge of every word. Together they had planned her position as an ambassador for peace between Galbadia and the rest of the world that had been left reeling from the last War. It was a ruse, of course; she was nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing.

The media was also a great unifier, and (credit where credit is due) it had been Vinzer's idea to re-use the satellite array in Dollet to publicise her appointment as ambassador at Timber's old TV studio. When she had arrived at the studio, however, Vinzer's plans had clearly gone awry…

As she materialised backstage from out of her presidential suite, she found him being frogmarched off-set by a familiar face, with a familiar weapon. What was it called again, the blade? A gunblade. Hadn't that been _his_ weapon? And the scar, hadn't that been _his_ scar?

Was this her knight? Could he be the one? As she studied his face, he seemed as uncertain of her as she was of him.

Something was not right, though. He seemed too fiery, too immature. _But every sorceress needs her knight_. If he was her knight, they might not have met yet. _He will do, for the time-being_. He could be used, until she was certain, at least. Yes.

"Poor, poor boy," she began.

"Stay away from me!" Shouted Seifer.

It was clear he didn't know what he was doing, that he was acting on instinct. Malleable, a perfect candidate.

"Such a confused little boy," she continued, "are you going to step forward? Retreat? You have to decide."

"Stay back!" he warned, but she could see he was not as sure of himself as he pretended to be.

They were interrupted briefly. Quistis ran in from the adjacent set, but Rinoa stopped her with a flick of the wrist. What was _she_ doing here? She had always harboured feelings for her knight, she knew. It was clear the young man was struggling now, he needed help. Perhaps she should extend the hand first. You get what you give. _You reap what you sow_.

"The boy in you is telling you to come. The adult in you is telling you to back off. You can't make up your mind. You don't know the right answer. You want help, don't you? You want to be saved from this predicament."

"Shut up!"

"Don't be ashamed to ask for help. Besides, you're only a little boy."

"I'm not… Stop calling me a boy."

"You don't want to be a boy anymore?"

"I'm not a _boy_!" He insisted, letting the president go.

Vinzer instantly fled, coward that he was. If this youth was her knight, then he might be able to tell her of the past she had forgotten, the memories that accursed Tiamat had stolen from her. In turn, she could tell him what she could remember of his future.

"Come with me to a place of no return. Bid farewell to your childhood."

She was dimly aware of someone else running towards them both, but another flick of the wrist and he was subdued. The action was automatic, a reflex perhaps, or the work of Hyne protecting himself, and she paid the body no mind as it slumped to the floor. Rinoa's attention was bent instead on her new knight who, as commanded, turned and waved to the world he left behind.

Seifer took his role very seriously, and with a cruelty that surprised her. She remembered him, of course, in the end; but it had taken a while. It had come to her as a brief reminiscence of when she had visited Balamb for the first time, to ask for help with something she could barely recall.

The problem with living for as long as Rinoa had, was that things that may have seemed significant at the time became trivial further down the line. People who were a part of your life at the start were missing long before the end, and likewise the people at the end (few and far between) were all missing at the start. It could get very confusing; her reliving of the past, especially through Edea's eyes, had become something like a dream. A fugue state.

The other problem, she had found, with staying in Edea's body for so long, was that there was a constant struggle with identity. Edea thought Seifer was familiar, Rinoa also remembered him from a long time ago, when she had been young, before she had even become a sorceress, and then there was that golden thread of Hyne running between them both. He didn't know who Seifer was, but he knew and appreciated what he was capable of: _komplete obedience to power_.

The two of them worked well together, as she knew they would. He, Seifer Almasy, her utterly obedient knight, her bodyguard; she, the fulfilment of his dreams and aspirations of duty, power, and prestige. Vinzer had wanted him killed, of course, for daring to pull the stunt in Timber, but that had been easy enough to get around. She merely cast an illusion to make one of the prison guards look like Seifer, and Seifer a prison guard, on the way to the execution chamber. Seifer gagged and tied him with the other officer, and led him over to the chair himself.

There was to be a parade, of course, to celebrate her acceptance of the newly created position. She was to give a speech with the president, and to be led through the streets of Galbadia atop a hideous float, surrounded by idiots, all of it vaguely familiar to Rinoa, from several lifetimes ago. A memory of a memory.

It was not until she sat waiting for her turn to speak to the masses from the balcony of the presidential residence that she got a real sense for the significance of the moment that she found herself in.

She was calmly considering how she would address the masses. With her eyes closed in that moment of introspection, she was communing with Edea, who had become merely a comforting voice of reason resigned to the pecking order of consciousness in her own head, and then there was Rinoa's own voice – the voice of passion for a lost love one who was to be returned to her. The voice of Hyne, cacophonic and visceral, seemed to be gone for the moment, and Rinoa found herself to be relieved. At least, until she heard another voice outside of herself – a voice she knew all too well, for it was her own.

But far younger, far less sure. Far more alone:

"Umm, excuse me? I'm the daughter of, um, Galbadian Army's General Caraway."

She remembered well enough the events immediately preceding this moment – a half-hatched plan involving the use of Odine's bangle she had stolen from her father's study; an argument with Quistis; and a perilious and disgusting trek through Deling City's sewers. She knew what happened afterwards – coming to her senses just as she was set upon by a couple of real-life Iguions, not just the ones carved out of stone that famously decorated the Deling Gateway. Grotesques that forever guarded the names of the fallen warriors of the Dollet Empire of old.

Then why didn't she know what happened next?

"I thought I'd… come pay my respects… you know, 'cause of my father and all. So, I um, brought you a small gift. Please…"

She realised with horror that when she opened her eyes, the world remained dark. She was no longer in control of Edea's body, and neither was Edea. She could suddenly hear Hyne's voice loud and clear, strumming discordantly from that unbreakable thread that ran between herself and Edea. She tried to get up, to put distance between her younger, sweeter self and the danger that was ringing in her ears:

 _Deceipt? Away with you!_

It was a strong spell of expulsion, but it was also tempered by the fact that Hyne clearly still struggled for full control of a body that they were all fighting for now. It was quickly becoming clear that Hyne was winning, though.

The younger Rinoa went flying backwards across the room, and it was then that Hyne became aware of another reason his powers were dulled – the Odine bangle.

Telekinetically, he lifted Rinoa up bodily by the bangle she held on to, and managed to knock her out with a blow to the jaw. She heard Rinoa slump to the floor, and the bangle tinkle as it fell.

She felt something returning back inside of them - the thread of Hyne made manifest. Having stretched itself too thin, trying to make its way out and into the world, it came flooding back; far stronger and assertive than it had been before. As Hyne stood them all up and led them out on to the balcony to stand by President Deling, she became aware of his intent, and how he was using both her and Edea now. She tried to argue with him, but it was fruitless.

 _They took half of me! Where is it now, my korporeal eksistence? It is long since dead, my flesh korrupted, and for what? For the sake of this krowd of lowlifes?"_

"Lowlifes!" the crowd heard Sorceress Edea shout at them.

Rinoa tried to remember the legend of the Great Hyne – the god who had governed the world with his magic. Hailed as the creator of mankind, creatures made to serve him as tools to move the mountains he couldn't be bothered to. He slept a long sleep, and when he awoke their numbers had swollen to the extent where he deemed it necessary to reduce them. He killed the children, first.

 _They have no idea, not even an inkling of how small and insignifikant they are, kompared to the universe. Such egocentrik, arrogant fools! Have they no shame, no humility?_

"Shameless, filthy wretches."

But you killed their children, Rinoa thought. Then when they resisted, you started killing the adults – the fathers, mothers, grandparents. No wonder they fought back!

 _They persekuted me. Hunted through the centuries by the very kreature I gave life to. They were once_ all _my children. They stripped me of my skin, my body, thinking that was where my power lay, wanting it for themselves. Now look at them! How they celebrate!_

"How you celebrate my ascension with such joy. Hailing the very one you have condemned for generations. Have you no shame? What happened to the evil, ruthless sorceress from your fantasies? The cold-blooded tyrant that slaughtered countless men and destroyed many nations? Where is she now?"

Something in this struck a chord with Rinoa, who had been hunted herself in the future she came from. The world had feared her power, because it was one they could never have or understand – only imitate. It was something pure and divine, something transcendental. Something that was never truly hers.

 _Bekause it is_ mine _!_ My _power – the half of myself I kould never let them find, I hid in women – the ones they protekt the most: their bodies are often so weak and feeble compared to men. But their minds are good and strong. Good for magik. I know you, Ultimecia, you are a kold-blooded tyrant, too. You have killed kountless men, women and children. The konquerer at the end of this world. Where are you now?_

"She stands before your very eyes to become your new ruler."

Rinoa heard laughter and could not be sure whose it was. She was losing the argument, and she was losing herself too, she knew. She had to hold on to something. Anything.

"A new era has just begun!"

She was dimly aware of Vinzer Deling stuttering some inanity beside her. Edea tried to keep him away with one arm; no, Rinoa tried to reach out for help from him, from anyone; no, Hyne impaled Vinzer with an outstretched hand and claw-like fingers.

Ultimecia? The name had sounded strange at first, but it felt eerie hearing it said in this time period. What else had she forgotten? How had her search for her knight come to this? Why wasn't he here yet, why wasn't he here with her younger self? Had she met him so late? Had she met him at all?

Was this a dream? No.

"This is reality. No one can help you. Sit back and enjoy the show."

The mob below her roared at the sight of her striking Vinzer, and crowded against the boundary fence of the residence. Whether it was in assent, outrage, or simply just to get a closer look, was of no consequence to Hyne.

"Rest assured, you fools. Your time will come. This is only the beginning. Let us start a new reign of terror. I will let you live a fantasy beyond your imagination."

Rinoa was in shock, and looking into the dazed eyes of her younger self as she walked past, to make her way down onto the float where Seifer was waiting for her, was like looking into a mirror. Was I really as weak as that, back then? Was I really so helpless?

 _What makes you think you are not helpless now?_

Because of hope. I'm alive here, in the past, and I must survive it all because I'm alive in the future, too. I can get through this all as me, as Rinoa. I can see me as I am, and as I want to be. There is always a strength to be found in weakness.

 _Then…_

"Let us end this ceremony with a sacrifice…"

She had to smile to herself: that explained the Iguions. But she had survived those as well, hadn't she? How had she done that, again? Hadn't it been Irvine? He couldn't have been on his own though, even he must have had help against two brought-to-life Iguions.

Hyne led them downstairs and up on the float which was waiting in the courtyard. They climbed aboard and took their seat at the back, with Seifer by their side. Hyne's puppets: A sorceress, and her knight.

The procession turned left to do a clockwise rotation of the city, before making its way through the gate in the centre of Deling. The giant arch loomed above them, adorned in the Galbadian flag and surrounded by swarms of jubilant, confused, faces. The huge iron rails that hung poised at either end of the gate were ornate and had been unused in years. Rinoa knew what came next though, she had been a part of the assassination attempt herself, all those years ago. Hyne was privy to the information as it was coming back to her, though; when the first portcullis came down, Hyne leapt to his feet simultaneously.

 _An assassination? From where?_

Rinoa tried not to remember the bullet, their "signal", but there it was. Hyne was already searching for it by the time the second portcullis came down behind them. A simple protect spell was all it took. There Rinoa's memory ended, however, as did her usefulness to Hyne. Satisfied the threat was over, he reseated himself and waited for the procession to continue.

Everywhere, fights were breaking out. Bad news had travelled fast, and the people were lashing out against the Galbadian soldiers posted up and down the street. There was the noise of screeching tyres as people were no doubt trying to flee the chaos that surrounded them.

Except one car's engine was getting louder. Another screech, and the sound of metal hitting metal, as she realised whoever had been driving had slammed the car side-on into the portcullis behind the float. The rails, designed more for show than anything else, were only really any good for stopping vehicles – anybody slim enough could easily slip between their bars.

Such a person climbed aboard the float now. A man with a scar, similar to Seifer's. A man whose very poise and stature screamed self-control. How she envied him that.

Seifer seemed to know him well enough. "Well," he said, pulling himself up from a defensive position beside her to stand between them, "so this is how it turned out."

"You've become the sorceress' lap dog?" the young man asked, hiding his surprise (if there had been any) that Seifer Almasy was alive and well, following his staged execution.

"I prefer to be called her knight," came Seifer's retort. "This has always been my dream," he explained. "Squall," (so that was his name!) "You're mine!" Seifer suddenly shouted, and attacked in a flurry of strikes with his gunblade.

Watching, Rinoa could see that the two of them were polar opposites of each other – right down to the scar they each wore across the bridge of their noses. Seifer's rose diagonally from bottom-left to top-right, whereas Squalls swept downwards from top-left to bottom-right. There was no doubt in her mind from the way that they were squaring up that each had given one to the other.

"Thought I was dead, eh? Not until I fulfil my dream!" Seifer taunted.

Squall was not one to taunt though. That self-discipline, which was what had struck Rinoa the most from the moment she saw him, came through even in the way he fought. Each strike was controlled, measured, and executed cleanly. Their blades locked and shot at angles deflected, bullets ricocheting off the names of forgotten Dollet soldiers inscribed on the walls, pinged off the iron of the gates, scudded into the tarmac in front and behind.

Seifer's over-confidence and familiarity with Squall drove him to fight instinctively, but predictably. As he came in for a back-handed lunge from behind his left shoulder, Squall parried and cut at his arm as he passed. He could have dealt a killing blow, Rinoa noticed, but had decided not to. He was controlling the situation. The cut was deep enough to make Seifer pause for thought.

"Not bad," he panted.

Squall was not breathing heavily at all, but readying himself instead for Seifer's next move. They continued their dance, but it was briefly over. Squall side-stepped another big attack from Seifer, knocked the gunblade from his hand with an upwards strike with the back of his blade, and swept Seifer's feet from under him. Seifer fell backwards, but before he could get back to his feet, Squall was stood over him, his gunblade at Seifer's chest.

"I… lost?" Seifer asked in disbelief.

"You're losing it, Seifer," said Squall, in a way that sounded matter-of-fact, but Rinoa could not mistake the pity that was there. A rival, yes, but not his enemy.

 _Our enemy_ , insisted Hyne, drowning out thought of everything else. _Who is this?_

Now it was time for Edea's memories to betray her. Memories of a man beseeching her to set up the Gardens, to train SeeD for the coming war in the future. The sorceress war to end all sorceress wars. The fight against _Ultimecia._

But she _was_ Ultimecia.

"A SeeD… planted in a run-down Garden," mocked Hyne. _They think to destroy us? Kill them!_

Rinoa watched as her younger self, together with Irvine, climbed aboard the float and joined Squall on either side. "I can fight if I'm with you! That's why I'm here!" she called across to him.

"I have to redeem myself," explained Irvine – for the shot Rinoa knew would never have missed if she hadn't unwittingly helped Hyne.

Rinoa wanted badly to stop time, to at least slow things down so she could make sense of everything. But she was stuck in this nightmare, she had very little control over Edea's body anymore, if at all; back in the future, she wasn't even sure if she could turn off Jamie. She was not so much junctioned to the machine as fused to it now. Perhaps you could spend too long conjoined with the machine.

Watching herself now, she knew she was on the wrong side of this fight, but was powerless to stop it… maybe she could stop them, these _SeeDs._ Was that what she wanted though, or what Hyne wanted? To stop _these akkursed…_

"Accursed SeeDs!"

She didn't use her strongest magic. She just wanted to stop them. But Hyne was amplifying her powers, regardless. The party of three managed to get in enough cheap shots for her to lose her patience, however, and their _insolence_ was whipping Hyne into a frenzy.

"Impudent SeeDs!" he spat, and raised an arm to materialise shards of crystalline ice. He hurled them all in a rage against their leader, Squall. The largest one pierced his chest, just missing his heart, but the damage was massive. Everyone watched in shock and horror as he staggered backwards, the younger Rinoa moving too late to stop him from falling from the float.

By then, the gates had been raised, and the army made quick arrests of Rinoa and Irvine. Paramedics attended Squall, who lay unconscious, yet alive. The army also apprehended the co-conspirators from inside the gate control room, who turned out to be none other than Quistis Trepe, Zell Dincht, and Selphie Tilmitt. Her old friends, each and every one. But who was this Squall? Could he have been, was he, the one she forgot?

 _Konfine them, question them._

"Take them away," she ordered. _Kill them!_ "Imprison them. Find out what they know about SeeD... Wait." She walked over to the paramedics who were working on Squall. The ice had melted enough to be removed, but the puncture wound went right through and there was heavy, continuous bleeding. _Finish him!_ It would take a very strong healing spell to fix. She concentrated, and managed to fix the flesh, but Squall remained unconscious. The effort of battling Hyne's will made her head hurt so bad it made her feel woozy. She closed her eyes and held her head.

"Are you okay, Edea?" asked Seifer, who was watching.

"Make sure he goes with them," she said.


	4. Disc Two

Months passed. Rinoa couldn't guess how many.

Edea's knowledge of the three Gardens had proved invaluable. Hyne had wanted control over all three, and so they had made their way to Galbadia Garden first, as it was the nearest. Martine, the Garden's Master, had clearly been hiding something, and it was not long before they had it out of him about the order for the assassination attempt coming from Norg, the outcast from the Shumi tribe.

Norg had left the Shumi with Cid Kramer a dozen years ago; the two of them both obsessed with the idea of founding the Gardens from which the SeeD would be cultivated – its ultimate purpose to defeat the sorceress. Which sorceress, though, nobody knew apart from Cid and Edea.

It quickly became evident that SeeD could sell their expertise to the rest of the world, coupled with the technology that was being leaked from the secretive city of Esthar – a practice that proved incredibly lucrative and went some way to sating the interminable greed of Norg, Balamb Garden's Master.

When his subordinate, Martine, had informed Norg about sorceress Edea's coup d'etat, his reply was considered and clear: Edea must be killed (Bujurururu!).

 _Treasonous! A traitor to our kause! The penalty has always been, shall always be, death!_

Hyne had ordered the immediate destruction of the other two Gardens, Trabia and Balamb, by long-range missiles. The Galbadian army had the firepower stockpiled in a missile base at the foot of Wilburn Hill, on the north-west side of the Galbadian Plains, all of it old technology – remnants of the last Sorceress War – but it would serve.

They had confirmation of the first launch against Trabia Garden, and Rinoa could feel Edea's heart breaking: a distant, outraged, scream. Finally, after a long wait, they had a panicked confirmation of the second launch against Balamb Garden, followed by the alert of intruders and sabotage from within the base. The last transmission was to inform them that the base's self-destruct sequence had been initiaited, and an evacuation order given. The SeeD from the assassination attempt, of course, had been to blame.

The submersible D-District prison, sitting amongst the dunes of Dingo Desert like a tripod, was driving distance from the Galbadian missile base. The prison was notorious for its high security; yet it seemed that if there was a way in, there was a way out, and if there was a will, there was always a way. In the end, Seifer had learned nothing from the interrogation besides the fact that SeeD were a formidable opponent, and Squall in particular had a will, a determination, that was becoming something to be reckoned with.

Galbadia had been reorganised, as she had intended. The SeeD had escaped, as she had expected. She, on the other hand, was still trapped inside the body of Edea, with Hyne at the helm, and with memories of what was going to happen coming back to her as and when the events unfolded – like some kind of sinister _déjà vu_.

Through her, Hyne took what he considered sensible steps towards completely neutralising the threat of SeeD. Galbadia Garden belonged to him; Trabia Garden had been decimated; Balamb Garden was nowhere to be found. It wasn't until reports came from Fisherman's Horizon that Rinoa's memory was jogged and Hyne had a fuller understanding of how Balamb had escaped the missiles: The Gardens were Centra buildings that had been repurposed by Esthar technicians. They had the ability to levitate and propel themselves across gentle terrain as well as the ocean.

He sent a force to occupy Balamb village, in case the Garden attempted to return there. In the meantime, Galbadia Garden was mobilised itself, and slowly made its way to Centra.

Edea was pleased to return to her home country, and Rinoa felt compelled to return to the fields by the orphanage, but not for any reason she could put into words. When they arrived, she stood looking across the fields for a good long while, before carrying on into the house.

The building was in bad repair, and it was clear that nobody had lived there for a long time. In Edea's bedroom, she found herself sat at the desk, overlooking the beach. There were odds and ends scattered across it, discoloured where the sunlight could reach them. Papers, books, diaries.

She found herself reading through them. And why not? Weren't they are third hers, anyway? Or a quarter? She had lost track. Her eyes tracked through records of the orphans that Edea used to care for, notes regarding each of them. Some were related, others not. Ellone, for instance, had arrived with her brother from Winhill. Elle. She had been special, hadn't she? Her notes mentioned a man from Esthar, and a strange ability that she had. That was right, she could help send people's consciousness back through time. The same Ellone that Rinoa had interrupted Edea's game of Triad with on the White SeeD's ship! The same Ellone that Jamie had been modelled after – JME – Junction-Machine Ellone – the same Ellone that was related to Squall.

Everything seemed to be connected. Pressed together and packing in tightly, but connected somehow – a concatenation of events, of people, of places. A _kompression_? Yes, like the compression of Rinoa and Edea, that had allowed Hyne to become so strong. With Ellone, it might even be possible to compress together time itself. _A kompression of time! I would be a God again, kreate my body anew, stop hiding in kowardice!_

And so Hyne came upon a plan for his return to Godhood, and Rinoa had no choice but to go along with it. On return to the Garden, she found herself giving the orders to prepare for an attack on Balamb Garden. They would wait behind the cover of the woods between the Cape of Good Hope and the Almaj mountains. SeeD would no doubt come to them, and when it happened, they would be ready. It felt strangely familiar to her own recent past, being hunted down like a dog in the sun, and waiting for the past to catch up with her; trying desperately to make a stand against the tide of fear and ignorance. Yet this differed somehow – this wasn't self-defence, was it? This wasn't about her own self-preservation. This was purely about self-interest, on Hyne's part, and pride. Utter pride.

Boarding parties were assembled and put through the drills. Schematics of the Garden were shared with each squad. Seifer had called back the occupational forces from Balamb, and when they arrived they were briefed and assigned roles. When Balamb Garden came into view, there was a buzz of excitement. Rinoa watched it approach, a bulb of silvery-blue on the horizon, propelled by the gilded mechanics of the Esthar engineers of old. Revamped by their descendants in Fisherman's Horizon.

Wearily, she made her way into the centre of Galbadia Garden, found herself a seat in the garden master's room, above the auditorium, and patiently waited. She knew how this battle panned out – how she would nearly fall to her death, only to be rescued at the last minute. She had clung on desperately for what felt like an eternity, feet scrabbling against a wall of mud and rubble, finding brief purchase before slipping again. She had held on for as long as she could, out of sheer faith, sheer belief and trust in something. Someone. Her rescuer. Her knight. It must have been him. She must have met him by then. But who?

She had already tried all the faces she could remember, but of course none of them fit – the whole point was that she couldn't remember the face that would! Hesistantly though, she now tried the only face she had met recently that had seemed completely new to her: Squall's. She imagined him finding her just as she was losing feeling in her hands, as her arms turned to jelly. She imagined turning over her shoulder to see him, himself hanging hundreds of feet in the air from a stolen Galbadian flight-suit, his face showing a flicker of relief before becoming once again stoic and authoritative. She remembered her own relief, giving way to tears, and the substantiation of her trust in him. Her knight, who would always protect her. She remembered her feet touching the ground with his.

When she discovered that this face, the one she had forgotten for centuries, was the face of her knight – when she knew it was him, in the same way she knew he would rescue her from falling; rescue her from being lost in space to drown amongst the stars; rescue her from incarceration at the Sorceress Memorial in Esthar – she knew it would be him that would rescue her from herself.

She considered now the pain she had already allowed Hyne to put him through, and the hurt that was to come to him by her very hand. Her grief was suffocating, and as her tears fell and Hyne's arrogant laughter rang in her ears, she was almost ignorant of the chaos that was surrounding her. Her personal guard had emptied the room after the Gardens collided, leaving only Seifer behind to protect her. When SeeD finally made it through to her, as she knew they would, she let Seifer do the talking. Her heart was breaking, and she couldn't find the words. She listened, absent-mindedly, as he spoke; her eyes were shut, but she could still see Seifer's sardonic smile:

"Oh, you guys shouldn't have… I was gonna come visit you at my old home."

"Shut up," Squall replied with a controlled anger. A brief pause was all it took for Seifer to realise he might need to try a different tact.

"Did you guys come to fight Matron? After all she's done for us? Rinoa, what are you doing here? You're gonna fight me, too? Come on, remember a year ago we…"

"Stop it!"

Her eyes snapped open at the sound of her younger self. She saw herself standing defiantly before them, shoulder-length black hair, soft and innocent, with none of the hardness that the years would give her, none of the monstrous deformities that a sorceress's powers would bring. How foolish had she been?

Behind her and Squall stood the others, her friends from the past – Quistis, Zell, Selphie, Irvine. All of them here, battle-worn but ready to fight her to the end.

It was Squalls turn to taunt. "It's too late, Seifer," he began, "You can't mess with our minds. To us, you're just another enemy, like one of those monsters."

Seifer lost his composure at that. "You're comparing _me_ to one of them? I ain't no monster. I'm the sorceress's knight. And look at you! Attacking like a swarm. You guys are the monsters." Clearly he felt outnumbered, but the rebuke had been a childish one. She had come to expect nothing less.

Squall ran towards him, alone.

"Show me what you got. I'll show you who's the better man!" Seifer shouted as he ran to meet him, gunblade drawn and to one side. There was a clang of metal as two swords met and they began their dance of shot and steel.

It became clear that Seifer had the upper hand, as he was fresh to the fight. Squall had had to battle his way through the combined might of Galbadian SeeD turncoats and the Galbadian army just to get here – and the effort had taken its toll. Squall was breathing hard and trying to mask injuries he had already sustained on the way up to the room. Seifer, meanwhile, took full advantage.

Seeing their leader losing the fight, the others joined in, but to no avail. They were all equally tired from the fray and Seifer knew how they fought, and what to expect. He was relishing the fight and making it last so he could enjoy the moment for longer.

"Is that all you got!? I can't be beaten!" He laughed. Rinoa could feel even Hyne cringe at Seifer's level of arrogance. Squall made one last desperate lunge with his blade, but Seifer parried it effortlessly, and shoulder-barged into him, knocking him backwards and onto the floor. Squall's gunblade span away from him, skittering across the ground. Seifer aimed his gunblade at the very centre of Squall's chest – the shot would have been instant death. The others stood stock still, afraid to provoke him, not sure that they could get there in time. Except for Rinoa.

"Ready to die, Squall?" he teased. "Kneel before me!"

Her younger self moved quietly, invisibly, out of the line of Seifer's sight. Hyne had noticed, but thankfully he was intrigued by what she was planning and let the drama play itself out. Without attracting Seifer's attention by moving closer, Rinoa readied a spell from where she stood. Hyne immediately recognised the spell for what it was, and "Sorceress Edea" rolled her eyes.

By the time Seifer had figured it out, however, it was too late. As the drowsiness took hold of his body, as he struggled to keep hold of the gunblade, he realised he had lost. Fighting to keep his eyelids from closing, he took his attention from Squall and turned instead to face Rinoa.

"Why!?" he asked her in disbelief. They were the only words he could muster before slumping to the floor, asleep.

And so the fight ended, precursor as it was to the deciding match. It had been a disappointing appetiser for Hyne, who had hoped for more from his "knight", something more spectacular, perhaps, instead of mere bravado. Rinoa could feel Edea's gladness that none of them had been truly hurt, but it was completely offset by Hyne's dissatisfaction.

"Worthless child," she heard herself murmur. If she could create space, allow some time for them all to recover, they'd stand a better chance. _They kould be one hundred times stronger, they still would have no chance. This room is too small for the majesty of my magic, Ultimecia. Let me show you._ Hyne rose from the Garden master's seat and passed through the floor as though its physical properties as a solid were just a rule that everyone else had to follow. The auditorium was below them, she knew, and allowed for plenty more space for a proper fight. A fight that could no longer be avoided. A fight against her real knight, and not for the first time.

Hyne liked to make an entrance, that much could be said. He waited in the gods, the highest balcony above the stage, for Squall and the others to arrive. As they entered, he made sure to somersault through one of the many glass screens, showering the ground with shards of glistening debris.

He was wholly absorbed by what Rinoa could remember of these SeeDs. She knew who they were, why they were here, but they had no idea who she was. Not really. Nor why they were fighting her. Not yet. She wanted desperately to tell them everything, but to do so now would jeopardise Hyne's dream of time compression. He kept her on a tight leash and, landing both feet on the podium, as graceful as a cat, he greeted them.

"So the time has come. You're the legendary SeeD destined to face me?"

Rinoa marked how Squall seemed to wince at the notion of destiny. Either that, or he had no idea what Hyne was talking about. Edea, however, could remember a troubled young man visiting her at the orphanage about twelve years ago.

"I must say that I am impressed," Hyne continued. "An impressive nuisance. Your life ends here, SeeD."

She could hear footsteps coming from stage left. Of course it was him – worthless except as an amusement to Hyne, and an embarrassing mistake to Rinoa – Seifer.

"Worthless fool," Hyne repeated as an acknowledgement of him being there. "All SeeDs must perish!" he shouted, and jumped down to meet them in the stalls. Before he could make an attack, Seifer was between them again. He had to prove himself worthy too his sorceress.

He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, but was clearly still drowsy.

"I'm the sorceress's knight," he hollered, almost as though trying convince himself as much as anyone else. "You'll never – ( _yawn)_ – get past me!"

Whatever way you looked at it, you had to admire his tenacity, Seifer's loyalty to his own vision of the future. It was a high stakes game though, especially the kind of future that he wanted, and like he said himself: he couldn't afford to lose. Unfortunately, Selphie's backhand swing from her nunchaku caught him perfectly on the jaw. When he went down this time, it wasn't so gently, and it would be a while before he was getting up again.

Hyne was already angry at the insolence of these people who, ultimately, he had given existence to. How dare they defy him, his will? How dare they presume to challenge him? _Insignifikant insekts! Pitiless worms! I will show you how little your lives matter._ "Enough play. SeeDs must die!"

Rinoa couldn't bear it. How had she ended up trapped here? Why was she being forced to watch this series of events from the wrong side of history? She had gotten what she wished for, true – she had remembered her knight, years of love and devotion that could never have been enough – but here, here her knight stood against her, ready to kill her. She tried desperately to stop Jamie, to remove the circlet, but she had no control over her real body where it was sat in the future. She had no control over Edea's body here in the past. It was like a terrible nightmare, a night terror: she wasn't really sleeping, so she couldn't really wake herself from it. Her grief and despair were left to swell up inside of her like too much dark water against a dam.

Hyne made to attack, but something was wrong. Something was managing to equal his power and influence over Edea. There was a corporeal tug of war going on between them all, and Rinoa was starting to win.

Words came back to her. Words she had said in a moment of childishness, mixed with the peculiar foresight of a sorceress: _Squall's sword will pierce my heart… I guess it's okay if it's you Squall._

It was not okay, though, was it? It couldn't boil down to this. She wouldn't allow it.

Finally: something she and Hyne agreed on. The dam cracked, and Rinoa exploded.

It was time everyone here grasped the full gravity of the situation. She balled her fists and felt her anger and frustration fill them until there was nowhere for it to go except outwards. She screamed, Edea screamed. Only Hyne was laughing as the energy pulsed from their shared body and swallowed the space around it. In the same way the three of them had been compressed into one body, they compressed the world around them, now. Atoms were squeezed together, the stage floor cracked and splintered upwards under her feet, the balustrade of the circles bent and twisted as it was warped by its own weight.

There was more screaming – as her eyes flashed out toward her attackers, she saw Zell in the distance crumpled on the floor, wedged between two seats; Irvine was holding on to Quistis, who had lassoed her whip around one of the rails behind her and held onto it whilst they were both lifted bodily into the air by the maelstrom; similarly, Selphie was holding onto the back of one of the seats from the circle, fighting against being pulled into the singularity.

For that is what it was – Rinoa had focused on a single idea so intensely, so massively, in a space that was already cramped enough through being shared with Hyne and Edea. It was condensed, pure, and wholly inescapable. It was this: that the Squall before her could never be her Squall; hers would have sacrificed himself to save her life, she knew. This Squall was prepared to die trying to kill her.

To destroy him now, though, would be to destroy her memory of him all over again.

The auditorium began to shake, terrible cracks ran along the walls, the ceiling. Lights fell, seats were lifting. It would not, could not last for much longer. She looked across at the only two in the room who were not screaming.

Squall was still standing, despite the chaos. His sword had become too heavy to lift, but his weight was dug in on his back leg which kept him from being pulled towards her and his death. Rinoa stood behind him, one arm around his middle, another grabbing one shoulder trying to keep herself up.

 _How pathetic you looked back then. How weak. We should end it now, even though you both deserve such an eksquisite pain._

She thought it was the voice of Hyne speaking, but she couldn't be sure anymore.

 _But_ she _is still useful to us, for what I shall inherit soon: her body. You kannot die yet, Ultimecia!_

"Stop calling me that!" Rinoa tried to scream, but it came as a pained and morose wail from Edea's lips. Edea's body could not handle any more of this kind of magic. All except Squall had already been subdued, but none of them were at the epicentre. She was, and she couldn't keep it up. Hyne realised it just as soon as she did.

 _Weak and useless body! Nothing like Adel!_

Rinoa knew that, in this time period, Adel was still incarcerated in a prison that not only sealed her magic in with her, but was in orbit around the moon and monitored by an Esthar satellite station.

She knew, then, that Hyne would leave them. Or Edea, at least.

She knew that Adel had a far stronger body than her and Edea put together. And she knew that the Lunar Cry was the only way of bringing Adel back from outer space, along with the rest of the lunar monstrosities.

Rinoa knew this, because it had already happened in her past. Hyne knew this, because it was his idea.

Edea's body buckled, and fell to one knee. Defeated, Hyne looked to find a successor. There was, of course only one rational choice in the room. As his golden, gossamer thread flew from one soul and into another, it took the future Rinoa's consciousness with it. She was entwined now with Hyne like the braids in a young girl's hair, or the weave in a rope. The rope was Ultimecia, and there was no escape.

The auditorium immediately stopped shaking. Irvine fell on Quistis. A few bits of plaster continued to fall and clatter around them. Squall had also fallen at the last moment, his body fatigued from holding himself and Rinoa up.

A lightbulb flickered and blew. The room was filling with its own light now, though.

As the sorceress's power, the power of Hyne, transferred itself over to the younger Rinoa, everything grew still. She rose to her feet, opened her eyes and saw…

She saw Edea breathing hard, collapsed on the stage.

She saw Seifer, his body broken and useless beside her.

 _Go to him_ , Ultimecia urged.

In a trance, she sauntered across the stage to Seifer's lifeless body. Her head was buzzing with several voices, all trying to speak at the same time. All telling her this wasn't right. One saying he must live, one he must serve. They were getting louder as Ultimecia made herself at home in her new body. _Revive him. Tell him. Instrukt! Obey!_ The magic to revive him came easily to her for some reason. It wasn't magic she had drawn using the Esthar technology, either. It came directly from her!

"Oh, my loyal knight, Seifer. The sorceress is alive. The sorceress demands…"

 _Rinoa?_

Rinoa looked at Squall out of the corner of her eye; she thought she had heard him, but he was still unmoving on the floor. What had she been saying? Why was she saying it? _I demand that you find the Lunatik Pandora!_

"That you find the legendary Lunatic Pandora," she said, turning to Seifer again. "Hidden beneath the ocean. Only then shall the sorceress provide you with dreams again."

 _Rinoa! Where are you? Answer me!_

Seifer had already risen, to look at him you would never have guessed he had come so close to death. Only his clothes were tattered, and his face dirty from the rubble. "As you wish, Ultimecia."

She wasn't Ultimecia! Why was Seifer calling her that? And Squall, why could she hear Squall's voice in her head, along with so many others?

Her head swam with the effort to keep in control of herself. A new sorceress, and a new host to the power of Hyne, coupled with the consciousness of her future self, and also, somehow, the consciousness of Squall, too. It was too much. To protect itself, her body began to shut down. As Seifer left the room, so did the light. So did everything.

As she fell into oblivion, the only sounds that came to her were Squall's concerned voice, followed by what sounded like her own, screaming at him to leave.


	5. Disc Three

Ultimecia awoke with a jolt. She was no longer the same as when she had last put on Jamie's circlet. She removed it now, which was an effort. Her arms, her muscles, everything had begun to waste away through not being worked. Her lips were dry and she was ravenous, too. How long had she been gone?

She had not come back alone. Hyne moved through her now in a way he never could before. He may not be as strong as he was when she and Edea had been coupled, but the two of them were fused together now. Inseperable. He had buried into her like a tick and there would be no getting rid of him.

Time compression. That was the whole point of bringing Adel back. If Ultimecia could enter the consciousness of Adel, then Hyne would be strong enough to compress time between Adel's past and her future – two sides of a vice that would be clamped together so that only Hyne could exist inbetween, because only he would have been there for all of it. Realities would merge together, and Hyne would emerge victorious, divine. He would no longer need to hide inside the women of this world, he could live without fear of being hounded for his power by the greed and obstinacy of his own creations.

Ultimecia took the time she needed to recover and rest. She drank, she ate, she slept; she slept soundly three nights in a row. Each night the dream was the same: she was tied to a chair in a large, dark room. A basement. Hyne would be stood at the top of the stairs, by the door, one hand on the pull-string for the light. He would say something she could never remember in the morning, and she would shout at him in outrage, before he would pull the light switch and she would wake up.

When she was ready, she started up Jamie and sat in the chair. She took some deep breaths. She knew where Hyne wanted her to go, she knew she had no choice but to take them both there. She knew what Adel was like, and the thought of entering her mind made her feel sick and uneasy with fear. Like swimming with sharks.

As the circlet came down, she closed her eyes. The mind she entered was Adel's, but not like any she had entered before. She couldn't open her eyes. She was very _very_ cold. It was impossibly quiet. She couldn't move. If there were sharks here, they were all frozen. There were some whispers of a few fish swimming, perhaps. Whispers to the tune of _I am alive. I will never let you forget me._

Ultimecia removed the circlet, and considered. She must have visited Adel while she was still in space. She needed to go back further than that, for time compression to work. Back to when Adel was younger, when she had just become a sorceress if that was possible. When had that been?

She tried again. Darkness, coldness, emptiness, again. She was less hesitant, now that she had been there once. She tried to go back as far as she could, but it was no good – each visit took her to the same solitary prison. Hyne raged inside her, at what seemed like a dead end. Perhaps Jamie had its limits, perhaps it could only send you so far back. Ultimecia knew it was not impossible, however. After all, she had been through time compression once before, already.

Just the once? How many times had they been here before?

 _Does it matter? How did you do it? How!_

Ellone, of course! It had always been Ellone. Disjointed memories came flooding back. Ellone could send them back into the Adel from the distant past, if they were inside the person she was sending back. Ellone was no doubt either hidden, or under protection. If they wanted any control over the person they visited in the past, it had to be a sorceress; and the only sorceress Ultimecia knew, that wasn't Edea or Adel, was Rinoa!

Ultimecia put the circlet back on, began searching for a mind that was all too familiar to her.

The body she found herself in this time was just as inert as Adel's had been. But it wasn't anywhere near as cold. Nor as quiet.

Rinoa lay on the bed in the satellite station, unconscious. Ultimecia spoke to her as you would to your own reflection in a mirror. Only the image reflected was younger, weaker, innocent. Naïve. She needed saving from herself, and the irony was not lost on Ultimecia.

 _Wake up,_ she said.

 _Where am I?_

 _You're safe. I am with you. I_ am _you, and you are me. But not yet, first you must wake up._

Rinoa opened her eyes, and through them, Ultimecia could see the isolation bed they lay prostrate in. Conscious now, the bed registered as much, through the elevated heartbeat it was monitoring. When it failed to make sense of the brainwave pattern, it began its alarm for the attention of any nearby laboratory staff.

This all happened quite quickly, but to Rinoa, it seemed to take forever. She felt drowsy as though she had slept for weeks, but that wasn't possible, was it? She felt weak, and her joints ached from not being used. And this voice… this voice that was hers, but that wasn't hers. More, another voice, deeper, quieter, more impelling. And it resonated with yet another, a fourth aspect; a part of her that was new and threadlike in its thinness; strong as steel, soft as gold. Power: that was what it was that sat her upright, swung her lead-heavy legs over the side of the bed to find her feet. Rinoa was brimming with a power she had never known, coming from at least three different directions that she couldn't identify but that were connecting. Connected.

She was suddenly aware of everything around her. From the music the lab assistant had been listening to, the stars that were corralled behind the glass floor beneath her feet and span in perfect patterns in time with the satellite station. As one assistant ran in to help her, he was knocked backwards as though he had just touched 240 volts. That was when somebody triggered a bigger alarm, as the concern moved away from the safety of Rinoa, and more towards the safety of the rest of the crew on board the station.

Meanwhile, Rinoa moved across the isolation chamber, through the adjoining medical laboratory and into the corridor leading to the main deck, and control room. She was not in control of herself, however. She was walking, trance-like, but it was not her that was doing the pushing, or the pulling. She knew where she needed to go, what she needed to do; but she didn't know how, she didn't know why. She felt just as she had done when she had first met Edea, when she had tried to trick her into taking the Odine bangle. She felt helpless, she felt invincible.

As the crew from that section of the station fled before her in their pristine white lab-coats and glasses, one man stood out amongst the crowd. He stood out because he was dressed in black, and he was running towards her.

Squall flew backwards just as the lab assistant had done, but he didn't stay down. He tried to grab her, to shake her out of whatever this was, more than once. But every time he touched her skin the sparks flew, lightning arced, and he was blown away like a leaf on the wind.

He paused as he got to his feet for the fifth or sixth time; something had caught his attention through the corridor window: the moon. He glanced back at her, not with eyes of fear or loathing this time, as he had done when Ultimecia was in possession of Edea, but with concern and compassion. He looked with love.

Seeming to reach a decision, he shook his head and ran ahead of her – undoubtedly to the control room to warn the others.

The moon's surface was bubbling and boiling over with monsters. They swarmed in huge colonies that blighted the whole surface, but seemed especially attracted to a particular spot. This was the lunar cry in its infancy, and Ultimecia knew it had been instigated by her loyal knight, Seifer, from the Lunatic Pandora on the earth below. He had succeeded!

As she slid into the control room, her friends could only stand and watch as she accessed the controls. Her movements were clumsy, but it was enough that she could push the right buttons. Pull the right switches.

Ellone was there, too. Ellone, the key to her success – but how could she make her understand why she needed to go back into Adel's past? Ellone wouldn't have listened to her, even if she managed to get her words out properly. As it was, the potential that coursed around her body was strangely keeping her lips sealed – as though if any portal were opened from herself out into the world, she would not be able to stop or control what issued forth. She couldn't stop or control it while it was inside of her, so what hope was there?

All she could manage were muffled "Mmmm-mmmm"s, teeth-clenched, arms and hands trembling.

"Adel's Tomb level one seal deactivated. Level one seal has been deactivated."

Squall tried one last time to snap her out of it, but was knocked back once again, cannoning into Quistis and one of the crew.

There was one other seal, located on the tomb itself. Ultimecia knew that Rinoa could do a great many things, but breathing in space was not one of them. She would have to find a spacesuit.

As she made her way back along the corridor, her movements becoming slightly surer now, less resistant, Rinoa looked up at the surface of the moon. Where the monsters gathered a mound was forming; for it to be visible from this distance she guessed there must have been thousands of them all stood on one another's shoulders. Wriggling and writhing en masse, all trying to reach the pillar inside the Pandora to which they were being summoned.

 _Quickly. We must hurry, the Kry is koming! We kannot miss it!_

The locker room was small, and many of the suits were in use, but there was one small-sized one that would fit. When she put on the helmet, Rinoa was gripped with déjà vu. She instinctively went to grab at the ring on her necklace, but it was inside the suit. Teflon slid against Teflon, and she continued into the decontamination air-lock. As she waited to be let out of the other side, she saw Squall enter the locker room. He wore the same pained expression on his face.

Why was he upset? Couldn't he see she was only doing what needed to be done? After this she could rest. After this, they could all go home.

 _Do this for us and we will release you._

She left Squall behind, tripping over his own legs as he tried to suit up. As she made her way out into the main docking chamber of the station, she passed three astronauts making their way in. The gigantic gate was closing behind them, slowly but surely. Rinoa propelled herself forward with some of the air left in her tank and made it through just in time as the two blast-proof panels slid together.

The tomb loomed before her, much bigger than she had imagined it would be. Adel was much bigger than she imagined she would be. Long red hair, mauve-tinted skin, and four times taller and stronger than the average man – Adel was as monstrous as the impending Lunar Cry behind her.

Anyone on the moon would have seen the Cry as a pillar, a stalagmite rising from the dust – monsters swimming through a miasma that drew itself upwards – like a nest of termites. From Esthar below, it would have been a stalactite, instead – a monumental drip that was descending lower and lower, as if from a tap.

As the combined weight of all of the bodies brought them all closer to the gravitational pull of the world, the drip fell. The viscosity was greater than water, however, all the particles were crawling over each other, desperate to reach the promised land – to swap the barren moon for a world of plenty. The result was a torrent of teeth, claws, wings and death that rushed onwards to Tear's Point, below. The first Lunar Cry since the Sorceress War, when Adel had targeted a rebellion in Trabia.

The panel before her was accessible enough, the controls simple enough to decipher. As Rinoa unthinkingly followed her fingers as they did what Ultimecia told them to do, the tomb came alive. Steam jettisoned into space as the cryostasis was reversed; if sound could travel in a vacuum, Rinoa would have heard the whirring thrum of Odine's patented magic-sealing device slowing down and coming to a stop. Rinoa gazed into Adel's eyes as they opened and glowed scarlet red, like rich, oxygenated blood. Adel knew she had been freed, and smiled.

Rinoa knew nothing, and smiled back. The voices were leaving her, fading slowly. The muscles that had been so tight and overwrought, relaxed now. She could unclench her teeth. She regained control of her body, her mind, but too late: the seal had been broken, and the path of Adel's tomb's orbit was taking them straight towards the Lunar Cry. As the tomb was hit on one side and swept down into the river of bloodlust, its other side kicked Rinoa away and along a different orbit around the moon, as though she had been stood on one end of a seesaw; she cartwheeled into space and had to close her eyes so that the stars in their interminable spin didn't make her feel dizzy.

In the darkness she could still feel the presence of her other self, her future self, Ultimecia. Full of scorn, full of hatred of and frustration with the past, the present. For her, she knew, there was no future. Part of her had lingered, nostalgically, despite Hyne's desperate quest to possess Adel's body.

 _You fool_ , she rued, _but you are going to survive this, at least._

 _Am I? How?_

 _You'll find a way. You always did, back then. You will survive beyond all your friends, and you will destroy all the enemies around you. The people will fear you, they will hate you, they will hunt you down; doomed to fall at your feet until you are all that is left. Lonelier than you are right now: drifting, endlessly, but alive._

Her suit didn't seem to agree. The air was running out, her breaths were becoming harder, and the temperature was dropping. Each time the space station came into view across her visor, it was further and further away. The dark side of the moon was getting closer and closer, and she knew enough to know it was going to get even colder in the shade. She closed her eyes, and tried to stay calm, to accept her fate.

 _That's it. I'm gonna… I'm gonna… die._

 _Hyne has us now, though, Rinoa. We belong to him, you and I. And Adel. We all are his, and there is no escape. You kannot die. You are needed for the kompression of time – the only way we can be free is to cast off this world, its temporariness._

 _Rinoa! No! Don't give up!_

 _?_

 _?_

 _Rinoa, come on! Try to remember! Rinoa, I'm right here with you! Listen to me!_

Rinoa opened her eyes. Ultimecia opened her eyes. Her ring, his ring. Their rings, floating before her on a chain so delicate and strong, a steel thread of her own. Perhaps _that_ was the real fate that could not be escaped. Ultimecia could not forget her knight – not again. Rinoa could not live without her Squall.

 _Ah, Squall. Forgive me!_

 _Squall?_

The curious mix of regret and hope had led her tears to flow freely. They floated away from her cheeks to mingle with her necklace and the two bands. Would imagining his voice be the closest she would ever get to being with him again? Ultimecia looked at the face of Griever briefly, through Rinoa's eyes, and her courage returned. She began to let go of this point in space and time. In Ultimecia's castle, she opened her eyes and found that her cheeks were also wet.

Back in space, Rinoa's thoughts returned to being her own thoughts, her breaths were her own breaths. And both could last only as long as the air.

 _Rinoa, the reserve supply! There's a button on the suit!_

Well. That certainly was not her imagination…


	6. Disc Four

Ultimecia looked at herself in the mirror. She was fighting the urgency that she could feel coming from inside of her to use Jamie one last time to possess Adel. That part of her, she knew, was all Hyne – hell-bent on ending everyone's corporeal existence, so that he might enjoy his own once more. Adel could wait, there was no rush on her part to jump into that kind of mind and start wrestling the sharks that swam there. Also, she knew Adel would never regain her strength in time to force Ellone to send them all back.

In the time period she had just returned from, Adel had been retrieved by Seifer and the rest of the Galbadian forces and was busily thawing out. She would be recouping, gathering her strength after sleeping for so long. Ultimecia knew what that was like – she had spent a long time inside the mind of Edea Kramer, while her body lay inanimate in her room – but couldn't imagine what it would be like to try and move again after seventeen years!

Ellone had also been captured by Seifer, and was being held against her will on the Lunatic Pandora. Of course, Rinoa now remembered rescuing Ellone from their clutches with Squall. Her memories had been returning thick and fast, ever since she had fought Squall as Edea.

She remembered now the final battle between Squall and Seifer – she could even remember the pity she felt for Seifer as he fell. Funny how not so long ago she had nearly confused the two men! They were so different, it was true, but then – in some ways – they were exactly the same. They shared the quality that she found most endearing in Squall: his determination, his tenacity, a special kind of recklessness that made sure the job was finished, no matter what.

That was the kind of determination she needed now, for herself.

She remembered being junctioned to Adel – used as a crutch to fight Squall and the others. Adel had not been anywhere near strong enough after coming out of being on ice for so long. She tried to take the strength and power of her contemporary, just as she had done with all of the sorceresses in Centra a century before.

But her knight had rescued her. Again.

Not her knight, no. He didn't belong to her anymore. She had lost him just as she had lost all of the others. All she had regained was her memory of him, and that would have to be enough, wouldn't it? He had protected her for as long as he could, and their time together had come to a natural end.

It was time she let go.

She needed to stop needing him.

She remembered falling from the chest of Adel, which was quite a height, and hitting the floor of the chamber. She remembered Seifer standing there, awestruck. She remembered Zell, Quistis, Selphie, Irvine getting their breath back. She remembered Adel's dying body searching for a successor for Hyne's powers. She remembered the look on Adel's face – not quite sure whether she saw fury, pain, or peace, or relief; there was no sadness, no remorse.

Ultimecia lifted the circlet once again, as she remembered that this was the point where she, took possession of her younger self, so that Ellone might send her back even further. The young Adel was waiting, and the end of time as she knew it.

Darkness, and a rushing, and a moment of clarity where she was stood on a stage before them all – her living memories, watching and staring, unsure of her – she stood where she had just fallen from Adel's gigantic body. Ellone ran forwards, then darkness once again, a rushing.

 _They opened their eyes, and saw._

Monsters were gathering around them: Ellone, Ultimecia, Rinoa, Hyne and a young Adel all crouched as one beneath the rubble. Elle was about to take Rinoa back when it became clear that something wasn't right. Ultimecia could also sense that something was amiss: she had come here expecting sharks, and yet…

Adel was crying. She was scared, and she was alone. There was no will to fight, no strength, no resolve. No wonder! She was a little girl, and she was surrounded on all sides by death and destruction.

Elnoyles scoured the skies, picking off the weak and wounded, while behemoths roared and fought over scraps. Wendigos played with corpses and torama prowled the remains of buildings and streets, curiosity being in their nature. Ruby dragons and hexadragons; grendels, grand mantises and tri-faces; iron giants, malboros and worse. All of them were here, and all of them were still thirsty for blood.

 _I'm all alone. (You are not alone.)_

 _Everyone's dead. (Some survived.)_

 _I couldn't do anything. (You can still do something.)_

The women comforted her as best they could. They reassured her. They shared with Adel their knowledge that it would be okay, that she was going to make it, that they would find a way out.

 _What can I do? (Take revenge and kill them. Kill them all.)_

Hyne's command cut through their words of comfort as a knife through butter. It was the only one that could be heard. The only one with power here. His thread ran through them all like a skewer runs through meat roasting on a fire, and when the skewer turned, they all turned with it. All of them, except Ellone, although she could still feel its pull.

Ellone was aware of the story of Hyne, but it had always been that. A story – something they told the children on the White SeeD ship to get them to behave. There were lots of morals to the tale – about laziness and greed and so forth. It had been useful. Never had she imagined there could be any truth to it. Never had she imagined she would ever be listening to his very voice.

Adel stood from the rubble, her body had already beginning to change following the receipt of the sorceresses' power. Their energy coursed through her and Hyne tapped into all of it. It was, after all, segments of himself, of his whole, dispersed and littered across time so secure his immortality.

The red shoulder length hair on the back of Adel's head began to raise like heckles, electricity arced between her fingers, between her arms and sides. Rubble beside her feet began to wobble, and levitate. The smaller rocks and dust rose first, followed by larger boulders – some of which cracked and split apart in mid-air. The electrical disturbance attracted a pair of torama that stalked nearby. They sat watching her now, uncertain.

As the magic flew, it moved the air around her. Gale force winds picked up as if from nowhere, clouds gathered, lightning struck and thunder rumbled. Ellone didn't think Adel needed comforting, anymore. In her view, she just needed to be left alone. Unfortunately, it was clear that Hyne had Ultmecia had other plans for her. Mentally grabbing Rinoa, she made a move to escape and return them both back to the Lunatic Pandora where everyone was waiting. She found it difficult distinguishing between Rinoa and Ultimecia, which she didn't dwell on – they were both sorceresses, after all.

Their consciousnesses left the ruination of Centra just as the era's greatest tyrant was born with a scream and an explosion that rivalled the impact of the Lunar Cry itself; the torama were disintegrated, iron giants were toppled, and the beasts that somehow survived fled in the wake of a far greater monster.

Ellone felt strange, as though she was returning with more of Rinoa than she had left with, but the feeling passed before they found themselves on the floor in the Lunatic Pandora once more. Laguna caught Elle, and Squall supported Rinoa as they both returned to their senses.

"Ultimecia's inside Adel. Exactly as she wanted. Okay, this is showdown, folks! Time compression is about to begin. 'Love, friendship, and courage'! Show'em what you got!" Laguna rallied.

Ultimecia was not inside Adel, as it happened. Hyne was. His thread had now been woven backwards through time, starting in the future and finishing in the past. It was stronger than it had ever been, and he had never been closer to realising his dream of becoming whole again, and wiping the stain of humanity from the face of the earth. He moved Adel like puppeteer would a marionette – the spell was not a complicated one, but it would take a while. You just had to be in the right places. At the right times.

Ultimecia was inside Ultimecia. She always had been; but now the nagging nostalgia, that misery and moroseness that had plagued her ever since her inception, the part of her that was entirely gone. The blue cord had finally been separated and unravelled from the obscene Gordian knot. It had been carried away, a single thread that had been unintentionally pulled by Ellone on her journey back out of Adel with Rinoa. The power of Hyne that still nestled inside of her had never felt so boundless and free, and relished the conjuring of time compression as it began to take place: it was the magical equivalent of closing a book, page by page, making sure each one was glued to the next, so it could never be read again.

Ultimecia was the shell of a woman that once was – now a puppet of the Machiavellian mastermind that was Hyne.

She knew she had been wrong to doubt his plan. Of course it was possible, of course it could happen. Her memories, her past, were all paling in comparison to the advent of a time-compressed world. She couldn't be everywhere, but she could be every _when_. She would no longer hide at the end of time, as Hyne had hidden inside of her; she would pervade it.

And then the door into her tower opened.

Squall entered first, cautiously, followed by his entourage. They stood before her, weapons drawn.

"SeeD..." she spat. "SeeD..." she tried again, as if what she wanted to say was impossible to convey with mere words. "SeeD..." listening to herself say it and hoping it was the last time she would need it to address anyone. How had they gotten here again? Her memories had left her along with that blue cord that had cut into Hyne and held him back for so long.

She swore they were like cockroaches.

"SeeD, SeeD, SeeD!" She finally raged. "Kurse all SeeDs. Swarming like lokusts akross generations. You disgust me. The world is on the brink of that ever-elusive 'time kompression'. Insolent fools! Your vain krusade ends here, SeeDs. The price for your meddling is death beyond death. I shall send you to a dimension beyond your imagining, outside of time. There, I will reign, and you will be my slaves for eternity!"

Her mirth at the thought of such a punishment rang in cackles around the pillars of her throne room. Before it had finished echoing, she descending upon them and attacked with glee.

She deflected their para-magic with ease – it was far weaker than hers, being derived from Odine's technology, devices that let them draw a portion of it from those creatures that carried it naturally. Her magic, on the other hand, came straight from the source, straight from Hyne, and was unstoppable.

However, they outnumbered her six to one, and they were far more powerful than she had ever remembered them being. Their physical attacks hit a lot harder than she expected, their weapons could hurt her, she realised. They stung and they bruised and they cut and they grazed. And the effort of keeping up with their movements was greater than she had anticipated – she had spent a long time in other people's bodies, younger and more active bodies, while her own had been sat down and strapped to Jamie.

They were wearing her down, and she felt the same desperation she had done years ago when she had summoned Bahamut. She reached for Tiamat now, but couldn't feel the terrifying presence of his guardian force – could it be that they had bested Tiamat? She looked at them now, as they regrouped, assessed, prepared for another assault upon her divine person; and Hyne began to worry. He would have to up his game!

Ultimecia beat her wings and rose above them, escaping the bite of Quistis' whip and the temper of Zell's fists. The only guardian force she could think of that would stand a chance against them was one that someone else had already thought of. The winged lion, Griever, already existed in Squall's mind, a symbol of everything he thought necessary to overcome life's struggles; he had been orphaned, abandoned, bullied, alone for nearly his whole life. Griever was proud, strong, courageous; Griever relied on no-one, needed no-one, wasn't responsible for anyone.

 _There is always strength to be found in weakness._

All Ultimecia needed to do was to give Griever substance, to draw him forth from Squall's mind in the same way Squall and the others drew their para-magic.

"You shall suffer!" She informed them. She would take Squall's grief, and throw it back at them all, ten-fold.

Ultimecia plucked Griever from Squall's mind and planted, seed as it was, into the ground before them. The marble slabs trembled and the pillars shook. The floor began to lift, and from a dimension between the throne room and the stairwells and dungeons below, Griever clambered out. The scarlet claws from his mighty paws scrabbled along the marble for purchase; finding none he pulled at the pillars to lift himself up. The pillars came down, as did the roof that they supported. As her tower came crashing down, Griever drew himself up and up, until he stood at his full height above them all. Adel was dwarfed in comparison.

His white-feathered wings lifted his weight upwards so that he stood on his hind legs, so that Squall and his companions could see a body that exuded raw power: a violet pelt stretching over muscle and sinew, all taut and raring to go. He flung arms thicker than tree trunks out and away from his gargantuan chest, loosing a roar the reverberations of which pushed the party backwards and blew what walls were left of the room around them off and into the sea hundreds of feet below.

Squall and the others shook themselves free of the dust and debris and readied themselves again. They had fought guardian forces before, and would treat this one no differently. Squall was visibly shaken though, and Ultimecia was pleased to see his resolve waver. While they were distracted, she would continue the compression of time. If they somehow survived, by the time they realised time was still compressing, they would be too late to do anything about it. They were stood on the last page of history, and couldn't see or experience what was, effectively, the pulping together of their past.

"Make them bleed!" She screamed, before resuming her spellcasting.

Griever immediately made up for the physical strength that Ultimecia had obviously and desperately lacked. The SeeD had trained nearly their whole lives for this moment, though. They were not about to give up.

Griever fought like the animal he had been inspired by, writhing and snarling and biting. His claws cut one way, while the scythe-like protuberances from his elbows cut the other. His tail whipped and lashed, and the party quickly found they were in danger of his horns running them through if they were caught standing in the right place at the wrong time.

Squall was fighting harder than he ever thought possible, not just to keep up with an apparition he had always dreamed would be his enemies' worst nightmare, but to keep his emotions in check. He took pride in being the epitome of self-control, of professionalism, of fighting with honour. But how could any of that hope to serve him here?

He looked for anything that could gain him an upper hand without sacrificing sure-footing for higher ground, speed for power, or his life for Griever's. He had to see this through to the very end. He had to defeat Ultimecia, it was his destiny, wasn't it? It was what SeeD was made for. Wasn't that what he had told Balamb Garden in the fight against Edea? Wasn't that what he told himself in the fight against Adel? This was his fate. And hers.

Distracted, his eyes sought her out amongst the chaos of magic and steel, feathers and claws. The flashes of purple and red had done well to hide Ultimecia's continuing presence at the back of the – well, it couldn't really be called a room anymore, not without four walls and a ceiling. But there she stood, watching the fight for everyone's existence taking place, yet clearly concentrating on something else. Her lips were moving as they mouthed the words to something, and she herself looked possessed. She almost reminded him of the single-mindedness that Rinoa had shown on the Esthar space station.

Come to think of it, she and Rinoa looked quite similar, full stop. Right down to the way they stood.

Ultimecia sensed the intrusion, could feel Squall's eyes on her and, defiantly, returned his gaze with her own stare. Her own chocolate brown irises had been replaced with Hyne's fiery gold, but the look of defiance remained the same.

Right at that moment when, given a second longer, Squall would have come to a realisation that would have changed everything, he had the wind knocked out of him.

He had paused for too long. Griever seized his chance and sent Squall flying with a back-handed slap in the split second opportunity he had been afforded by the other five.

Squall scudded along the floor like a stone across water and hit the back of his head hard against the remaining stub of a pillar. Warm darkness enveloped him, and his mind tried desperately to return to a memory of safety – but it was like grasping at straws. The happiest memories of his, those that hadn't been ravaged by the guardian forces Garden had encouraged him to use, were few and far between. No mother, no father, and a sister that was taken away from him; a mercenary lifestyle, a job security that equated to whether or not he could stay alive; and a relationship with a girl that the world feared with powers they envied or abhorred.

Squall had never felt safe, and the more he realised it, the more unfair it seemed.

These dice that had been rolled for him, whose fault was that? This situation he was in – which was looking pretty bleak right now, let's be honest – who was accountable for that? Some kind of God? The Great Hyne? Was he honestly expected to believe that?

As his comrades began to tire, Griever dealt with them one by one. Zell was dashed against the floor, arms broken and mawled by Griever's jaw; Selphie was desperately trying to revive Irvine who by nature of his weapon had had to stand still for too long whilst aiming; Quistis' whip cracked at thin air, trying to distract the attention of the sphinxian beast as it turned its attention solely on Rinoa. He had always known he couldn't have them forever, these friends he had made despite himself, but now that it came to it he really couldn't see how he could let them go.

Ultimecia and Hyne's use for Rinoa's body did not extend beyond the past. Rinoa was now in the future, where time compression was at hand, and so Ultimecia was in no hurry to interfere. Squall was defeated, SeeD was crumbling around him. She had won.

Through the darkness, having given up searching for a safe place to hide, Squall returned to the here and now: he felt helpless, his friends had nearly all fallen. Zell was screaming in pain. Why couldn't he move?

 _Ah…_ one of the steel reinforcing bars had been bent away in the direction from which Griever had used the pillar to drag himself into this physical plane. Now it was coming through his shoulder from between his scapula and clavicle. _That would be why_.

Was he scared anymore? He couldn't be sure. Nothing lasted in this world, he knew. If by some miracle he survived all of this, it would only be to die somewhere else, some other way. That much was inevitable. He didn't expect to be saved by any of his team, to have such a hope was reckless. He had learnt from an early age that the only thing you could rely on other people to do was to let you down. Help others if you can, sure, but you have to be able to look after yourself, first; that was the lesson the world had taught him.

Squall did not feel in much of a position to help himself there and then, it had to be said.

"Squall!"

He was dragged out of his reverie by Rinoa who had only lasted this long because of Quistis succeeding in distracting Griever every now and then with a whip that broke the skin on his haunches and caused him to turn and snarl at her. Her last attack had been countered by Griever's own whip, though – a tail that slew through the air low to the ground and swept Quistis off her feet.

"Squall! You _have_ to get up! _Please_!"

Someday, you were bound to lose everything. Everyone around you will be gone, he had told her, in one of his sullen moods. And when that happened, what were you left with?

Nothing.

He had told her this from experience. He had already lost everything, everyone he cared about, before he had even met her. The truth was a miserable one, and he knew that if he let her depend on him, if he let himself love her, as he had loved before, he would only be doomed to let her down. He would lose her too, someday.

" _Squall_! Help me!"

Someday, he mused, but not today.

There was a terrifying scream as the ferrous bar grated against bone, and Squall realised the sound was coming from him. He was curiously displaced from his body. The actions weren't his, they were his body's. The pain wasn't his, it was his body's. He felt not dissimilar to when Ellone had sent him into the past as Laguna, only this time he was in the present as himself. He had no control over it, but that was fine. He didn't need to tell his body what to do anymore. It was doing exactly what he had trained it for.

His legs, undamaged, would get him there in time.

One of his arms was useless, but he only needed one to raise his sword.

He might not get another chance, but this chance was all he needed, and he was going to take it.

As Greiver was about to disembowel Rinoa with one swipe of his claws, as she raised her arms in a final and useless effort to protect herself, Squall plunged his gunblade between the animal's ribs.

He pushed it as far as it would go

He squeezed the trigger.

Griever fell away from the blast, trying to turn and take revenge upon his assailant, but the muscles he needed to contract to do so were gone. Dark, veinal blood immediately began to pool around his body. His tried to beat his wings for retreat, but the difficulty breathing meant he was quickly losing the energy he needed to do anything.

His breaths became shorter and shorter, gurgling. His last roaring bellow was more of a moan than a battle cry. His body slumped and quivered, and the light behind his eyes died while his carcass remained, steaming.

Selphie had moved on from Irvine, and was now with Zell. Quistis ran over to Squall and Rinoa.

"Ultimecia…" she tried to tell them, but was interrupted by the sorceress herself.

Beating her raven-like wings above, she looked down on them with scorn.

"Impressive! You have conquered your fears, you have bested your grief and, somehow, you are all still standing. But it is time you face the fakts, despikable SeeD! Time shall compress! All of your miserable eksistences shall be denied!"

Irvine and Selphie ran forward, but even as they ran, they began to fade. Before they hardly got very far before they had disappeared completely: absorbed into the time that was rapidly being compressed. Zell and Quistis only managed looked at each other as they, too, began to fade.

"Squall?" they turned to him, reaching back.

"Zell, Quistis! Hold on!"

But they had evaporated, squashed out of existence by the heavy folds of past and future.

This was it: the final page.

He reached for Rinoa's hand, held it tightly, but there was nobody there to hold anymore.

"Reflect on your childhood," Ultimecia told him, as the world turned to grey.

He had.

"Consider who you are: what you can sense, your words, your thoughts, and your emotions."

He always did.

In this void that had swallowed him, they were all that was left.

"Time," she confided, "it will not wait. No matter how hard you hold on, it escapes you."

Well, that sounded an awful lot like some of his own advice!

"And…"

And time stopped.

Hyne left Ultimecia's body – finally free to do so in this world he had created for himself. He had spent millennia hiding inside different women, travelling from one to another as and when it suited him. He exploded upwards and outwards, an interstice into timelessness. The light was so bright that everything became a mere shadow in its presence. After Hyne had gone, shadow was all that remained. Except for Squall, and Ultimecia. Her only remaining shreds of power had been left behind by Hyne like droplets of water in an empty cup. The shell of a shell.

… _And I've been holding on so hard, for so long, Squall. But now I can finally let go!_

She had been defeated, but not by her knight, after all. She had been undone by her inability to accept the fate that he had warned her of so many years ago. All things must come to an end; this one would simply be hers.

They moved through time, the two of them. Squall led, unaware of her presence, and she followed, as she always had done. In Hyne's absence, time would naturally begin to decompress, bit by bit. The pages would start to bubble and lift apart once more, and time would resume its endless march.

When they finally appeared in the courtyard outside Edea's orphanage, where he had made his promise to wait for her, he was clearly lost and confused. Rinoa wasn't here, yet, but Edea was. She had already inherited the powers of a sorceress, Ultimecia knew, but…

 _What I have left to give will take up so little room_.

Squall couldn't stay here. He was in the right place at the wrong time, and would have to keep searching. She liked it here though. And as a final resting place, she considered, there was probably nowhere as peaceful or as sentimental to her. And she was so _tired…_

 _It doesn't matter that he can't see me, now._

 _I can see him, I'm with him, and really… that's all I ever wanted._


	7. Epilogue

In the dance hall at the SeeD graduation ceremony, a young man leant against one of the columns and excluded himself from the celebrations.

Dollet had survived the attack by Galbadia and four cadets – including himself – had shown incredible promise, earning themselves their promotion. True, the satellite array remained operational and in the hands of the Galbadian army, but the rest of the coastal town had been left alone. He knew it was a victory, but he didn't feel victorious.

He had taken a flute of champagne from one of the waiting staff, but even that was dry and tasteless to him. The other graduates came over to him, trying to make conversation, but he really wasn't interested in making friends. That was not for him. Not something he needed.

Meanwhile, Rinoa had travelled all the way from Timber to meet with Cid Kramer and discuss her plans to liberate her city from its Galbadian occupation. She didn't have much money left to hire SeeD, but she did have information she had gleaned from her father, Fury Caraway – one of Galbadia's more prominent generals. Of course, she didn't tell him that.

She was there following the advice of a cadet she had dated once and was still in contact with, having failed to get an appointment with the headmaster. Cid, it had turned out, was an incredibly disorganised and, therefore, busy man; he was constantly chasing his own tail, and being told by his personal assistants where he was meant to be and what he was meant to be doing.

Seifer had told her about the graduation ceremony: "Everyone will be there when I get promoted! You should come too, then you can meet Cid."

It had been a good plan: spur of the moment, right up her street. She had left Seifer disciplining some students for hitting the punch at the buffet too hard – which was kind of a relief, as he was in an incredibly bad mood for having not made it as a SeeD this time. Also, his new battle scar was terrifying to look at.

She had just started making a beeline for Cid when she was stopped in her tracks by a mysterious buzzing in her mind.

She couldn't place it, but she suddenly had a new appreciation for where and when she was. This was a special moment, wasn't it? Not just for the SeeD graduates, but for her, too. Why was that? Because she was finally going to get to speak with Cid?

 _No, that's not it._

She looked up at the moon, and took in its full, monstrous glory. When had something she had always seen as beautifully romantic suddenly become fearsome and foreboding to her?

She felt as though she shouldn't be taking something for granted, but wasn't sure what.

Maybe, she thought, it's because it's quite fancy here? The polished brass, the embroidery, the ambience, the music, the sheer pomp and classiness of it all? Everybody is happy here, unlike in Timber.

 _Are they?_

The question was left hanging as Rinoa was caught off-guard by the ephemeral beauty of a shooting star as it danced across the cloudless and velvety black. There was a strange compulsion to look to her right. Something important was there, someone important was there, though she couldn't say how she knew.

She followed such a compulsion, as it was in her nature to do, and found one of the SeeD graduates staring at her. She had to admit, for someone who had just achieved what he had spent his childhood working towards, he didn't look very happy. She pointed at where the star had been – had he seen it? Didn't he think it was magical? Wasn't it something to smile with wonder about?

She had looked at him as though she had known he would be there. She had shared the same special moment that everyone else, all wrapped up in their own successes and failures, had failed to notice. That made her special – unlike the others. Interest piqued, Squall inclined his head as an invitation for her to come and break his solitude. She was not a cadet, not a SeeD. He wondered what she was doing here.

For some reason, despite the terrifying scar that was nearly identical to Seifer's, and the transparently obvious "I wish I was anywhere other than here" vibes, she felt herself drawn to him.

Little did she know that Ellone, a lady she hadn't met yet, had let go of an extra weight, somewhere along the way; it was a weight that was rapidly feeling lighter, though:

 _Are you kidding me? He's the best-looking guy here!_

The ridiculousness of the thought made her giggle. Blonde men were more her type. Authoritative, not obscure. Outspoken and confident, not introverted and grave.

The scar was recent, he must have gotten it in Dollet.

Maybe he was just self-conscious?

The kind thing to do, the right thing to do, would be to try and boost his confidence!

"Dance with me?" she said.


End file.
